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What a beautiful day we had. How lucky we are!!!

Blue skies, crisp snow, plowed streets and campground spots. And I think we saw a total of 12 people today including the 3 employees at the visitor center, 1 at the market, 1 at the gift store and 1 at the lodge. And yes, we spoke to each of them individually.

We walked up to the visitor center, but it didn’t open until 10am, so we farted around the market and the gift shop till it opened. Spent our usual hour or so in the visitor center talking to the employees, watching the movie, and going around the displays.

King’s Canyon National Park and Sequoia National Park are connected and although they are separate national parks they’re almost treated as one. I did not know this but King’s Canyon is a larger canyon the the Grand Canyon. Huh? King’s Canyon also has the 3rd largest Sequoia.

The trail up to Panorama Point (King’s Canyon overlook) isn’t plowed so it is closed to cars…but also means it’s open for hikers and snowshoers. The snow wasn’t so deep and fresh that we didn’t have to rent snowshoes. We did bring our Sorels from Tahoe so we went in those. It was a super fun 5 1/2 mile round trip hike with a constant gentle uphill slope. It was a beautiful mostly sunny day and it was a great little hike.

The overlook was beautiful and it made me want to go down into the canyon even more.

The hike back down was even more fun since it was an easy downhill in snow boots.

We walked back to camp and Edwin wanted to go down and check out the big General Grant tree, but we ended up just enjoying hanging around at camp…being the ONLY ones 🙂

Dinner of leftover Chinese and I’m busy catching up on the last 2 weeks of this lovely blog.

Bye Truckee.

On the road again. Even though we were all packed up, “staged”, and ready to go, it was still noon before we left the house.

To be in the RV again. Underwhelming. Annoying. Unstable.Literally. Sad. We don’t want to leave Tahoe. It’s so nice to go weekday skiing in amazing snow. But we’ve already been here 2 weeks and if we don’t go now I feel like we’ll never leave. We could easily be here till June and not blink an eye. Plus a wise friend so poignantly told us this morning, “you know you guys are leaving one vacation for another vacation, right?” Yes, we feel silly.

It’s going to be a bit before we get back into the groove of things. There is not this immediate “yay we’re back in the RV”. It’s more like a ok, wow, back in the RV. Everything moving and shifting around as we drive through the neighborhood. ISABELLA… LOCK the FRIDGE. Is the fridge locked? Quick, go lock it. Ok everyone, we know we’d all like to be skiing today or back at the house but…we’re going…we’re off.

Oh and this was Edwin’s fortune at Chinese tonight.

It was a long drive to King’s Canyon National Park. 19th National Park.

It was dark and late when we arrived at King’s Canyon after we stopped for dinner along the way. The hours of being in the car and the uncertainty of the trip creeping into all of our thoughts was almost immediately wiped away after driving by a giant Sequoia. Pretty incredible. Then going outside. Smelling the air, breathing it in. And looking up at the dark sky. The stars are amazing tonight. There’s not a huge sky because we are camping in a grove of giant trees around us, but the sky was so dark the contrast of the stars were amazing.

We were just up in Truckee, not too different of a place, but very different energy being an RV than a house. There is one tent camper on the other side of the only campground in the park. We are essentially camping alone in this giant national park. It’s nice to be on the road again.

Oh, and…

We were excited to do one last day of skiing. We only made 2 runs happen. It was such a white out at the top Summit it felt dangerous to ski down. We did a run at Roundhouse but it was just time to stop skiing.

Oh, I almost forgot and so bummed I still don’t have a phone and Edwin had left his in the car. How did we not have a camera today?? There were only a handful of people skiing today and when we were about to ski into the chair when we saw Riggins come up. Does anyone have a Riggins trading card from Alpine? Riggins, the cutest golden retriever working dog at Alpine. We of course backed up, said hi, gave pets, but perhaps the best part of our Riggins experience was watching him board the chair lift and get to watch him the whole way up.

It would’ve been nice to get at least a few hours of skiing in before we went home and may very likely be the last Tahoe ski of the season, but alas it was also nice to be at home, watching the snow fall, get the last minute things together, and bake some cookies. Bye Callie, fun last night.

Vera woke up with an ear ache so we spent the morning at the same day urgent care. Her ear ache was mild but we picked up a bottle of amoxicillin in case it got worse. We are planning on leaving tomorrow or Wednesday so didn’t want to get on the road without something if we needed it. But we started with oils last night so we’re going to see if we can heal it with that before we use the antibiotics.

We got back and spent the rest of the day organizing and cleaning the house getting ready to leave. It’s supposed to snow tomorrow so we decided to leave Wednesday. We’ll have everything staged, ski tomorrow, and leave Wednesday.

Daisy did not help. She slept with her own kind.

Operation find Kati’s phone. Was NOT successful. The girls weren’t feeling well or weren’t feeling like skiing so Edwin and I went back to Squaw to go find my phone. With Callie’s metal detector in hand. We had good vibes that we were going to be successful. Veenstra met us at the top of red dog lift and we searched for 2 hours before we stopped. We gave a valiant effort. I really can’t believe we couldn’t find it. Such a bummer. I thankfully have my pictures backed up on iCloud so I wasn’t too concerned about that anymore and my phone was pretty broken so I was ready to get a new phone, but it still had my drivers license, 2 credit cards, and some cash. What a pain it going to be to get those replaced.

Defeated we went down to Olympic village and met up with Matt, a different Matt, Girvan the one I was texting yesterday on the red dog lift which is why I dropped my phone so I should also obviously blame him along with Vera for me dropping my phone 🙁 Matt was having lunch with Roscoe and was waiting for Archie to come down for lunch from ski team. We had lunch and Archie wasn’t up for the afternoon session so we all went back to our house to hang.

The kids played and we watched the KC Chiefs win and the 49ers play and win after them. Off to the Super Bowl they both go. This is going to be a fun match up: Chiefs vs. 49ers.

It was so nice to see Matt and the boys and spend a good chunk of time hanging out. We missed you Amy, we’ll catch you on the flip side.

Squaw day today. We had fun with Matt finding the unskied powder left at Squaw which there was quite a bit on the lower part of the mountain.

What a fun lunch down at the KT base bar. The sun was out. Great music. Lovely morning of skiing. Riley left ski team to meet up with us as well. We bring lunch but we ordered an tasty plate of curly fries. All was well with the world.

We skied headwall in the afternoon because Callie was doing a freestyle competition. The day was running long so they bumped her to the next day. Instead, we skied a run with Callie and Blue. The girls knew Callie was good but man, she’s fast. The girls felt like they “were a baby making their first turn” skiing with Callie. We let Callie lead us down, but Edwin did have to tell Callie, “hey Callie, no cliffs ok” “oh, ok thanks for letting me know”. Ha, nice. Glad we made it down without having to drop off any cliffs.

Enough moguls for the afternoon and everyone was pooped so it was time to head down the mountain. “One more run” I had to say, “I want to do a speed run down Red Dog”. Edwin said he was done for the day, but girls came with me.

Here’s a PSA that apparently I never learned, well did actually learn, but was careless enough to do it anyway. DO NOT TAKE YOUR PHONE OUT ON THE RED DOG LIFT. No, but I had to text a friend and then took a selfie of the 3 of us going up the lift. Really I’m blaming it on Vera (just kidding) because she made a face and so I took another selfie and after I did…hand fumble…phone goes flying out of my hand. And I see it where it goes into the snow. Or at least I thought I did. Of course it was right under the lift in the super steep part right below the top of the lift. I sent the girls down to meet Edwin and tell him that I was going to ski down the face to try and find my phone.

I was convinced I knew where it fell, but no luck to be had. Too bad I didn’t drop my pole as a better marker.

So no pictures from the day. A shame really because I took great ones at lunch 🙁 … and on the red dog lift 😬 … double 🙁

I spent the evening bummed and worried that I had lost all of our road trip pics.

ALPINE. Beautiful blue-bird day. No complaints at all. And I’m finally understanding my skis more.

It was however a bit somber. There was an avalanche here this morning and 2 people were caught in it. One gentlemen passed away. His friend was rushed to the hospital. What a bummer. Well beyond bummer obviously. It was kind of weird skiing today knowing what had happened but they kept the resort open. And last week there was an avalanche up at Silver Mountain in Idaho 3 people died. One of the guys that died was a good skiing buddy of one of our best friends up there. We’re sorry Bill & Heidi

Skiing again. But this is what the morning on the way to the ski hill looks so that we get to do fun stuff like weekday skiing.

Another snow storm coming in today so Callie had a snow day so after we got home from skiing we played outside in the fresh fun snow.

It left a nice blanket of snow.

The girls went inside and watched some TV, while Edwin and I went for a quick 4wheel ride.

Oh and Emily got a cute little dwarf hamster she named Popcorn. Not fair. We want to meet her.

Sledding Day.

There is an awesome golf course close to the house that is awesome for sledding.

It works a few ways…
1. It a good little walk out there, gives the kids excercise
2. It’s enough of an activity to work the day around from
3. It’s sledding, so the excercise getting out there and back up the hill can’t really be called excercise because well…it’s SLEDDING 🙂

It’s snowing today. Yay. And powder day.

New skis for me today. I bought used skis back when we were teaching Isabella to ski about 10 years ago. It was time. We were actually out looking for longer skis for Isabella but couldn’t pass these skis up. And boots. Mainly because when I gave them my boots to size the skis they very awkwardly told me that they would NOT resize the new skis to these boots. They are simply too worn down and unsafe. Soooo, I went back up and found a pair of boots in their consignment part.

Do I dare mention that I’ve been skiing in the same boots that my mom and dad bought me for Xmas when I turned 14 years old? Don’t exactly how I’ve never bought new boots but I went to snowboarding in high school and only started skiing again 10 years ago when we began teaching the kids. Anyway the ski boots have been beyond comfortable, other than my feet would swim in them, but they worked perfectly for my lazy kid skiing. It was time for an upgrade.

What a cranky butt I was today on the mountain. I didn’t even want to lean in on this picture Edwin took.

These new all mountain powder skis are so different then the ones I have I feel like I could barely ski.

Edwin and the girls had a blast. Me, not so much.

Jason, here’s you frickin’ flocked tree for ya

The good thing about it snowing today was that every time I feel it was falling in powder.

We ended our evening going over to Callie’s for dinner. Yummy fondue. And hoverboards. Thanks Tiff & Blue 🙂